Storage giant EMC has announced a restructuring that will involve about 1,000 job cuts, though with simultaneous hiring the company expects to end up with the same headcount as before, or even “slightly more.” EMC had 60,000 employees at the start of the year.

The restructuring is “almost a mirror image of what we did last year,” David Goulden, CEO of EMC’s Information Infrastructure business, said during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

In May, EMC said it would cut 1,004 positions, including jobs at its VMware subsidiary in Palo Alto, Calif. Jobs were eliminated in its Information Storage, RSA Information Security and Information Intelligence Group divisions. However, the company said it ended 2013 with a net increase of 2,000 jobs as a result of the shifts in its business. That may be an indication of where new hiring will take place this time around.

Fourth-quarter earnings beat analyst estimates and executives stressed the company’s on track with its cloud and Big Data operations — which it spun off last year as a unit called Pivotal – and other emerging businesses.

The new layoffs are expected to be “substantially completed” by the end of the first quarter, and fully completed by the end of 2014, EMC said. It has not made public the positions to be cut or the locations.

However, as William Blair Analyst Jason Ader told the Register, “Management stated that the restructuring should be viewed more as a rebalancing, as the company moves people into ‘third platform’-oriented parts of the business and reduces headcount in legacy areas of the business.”

Meanwhile, an EMC solution provider told CRN that the layoffs are focused on “people who sell EMC’s noncore products as the company moves the sales of some of its ancillary products to its core pre-sales personnel.”

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It appears that they don’t want to pay sales commission on declining products.

“Meanwhile, an EMC solution provider told CRN that the layoffs are focused on “people who sell EMC’s noncore products as the company moves the sales of some of its ancillary products to its core pre-sales personnel.”